Just a public service announcement here. I just bought this so I can confirm that it is legit:
You can get almost $500 worth of apps and games for $49! And 25% of that goes to charity. It’s a fantastic promotion and the apps they offer are pretty cool. I already had a few of them and it’s still worth buying for that price.
It’s only going to last another day and a bit though, so get over there if you’re interested!
My lovely and talented wife had a couture jewelry show in New York so I went along as her resident pack mule. Hey, those boxes aren’t going to get themselves up 3 flights of stairs! The best part was that I got to wear a tuxedo for the first time in my life. I dare say, I clean up real good!
While she was doing her show, my traveling companions and I hit the town a little and saw some of the sights. I’ve never been to New York so everything was new to me.We stopped by ground zero to see what we could see (which isn’t much since they have most of it blocked off from viewing now). I also rode the New York subway a few times, saw the inside of Grand Central Station, marveled at the incredible diversity in the architecture, experienced the insanity that is Times Square, saw the Rockefeller center Christmas tree and visited the “Top of the Rock”. What a view! My god, it was intense. We were so high up that Central Park was simply a medium sized chunk of the yawning vista before us. I have no idea how a city that large continues to function successfully but it makes me happy that it does.
One of the best parts of New York was the food and the feel of the place. We spent our first night with friends at this tiny little corner store/restaurant near their apartment. It was incredible! The food was amazing, the atmosphere in the place was pitch perfect, and I had one of the best times of my life. Simply amazing. We left very late and very drunk.
On our last morning, we stopped into a diner near the hotel and it was perfect. It was that perfect New York diner that you see in the movies. A little grungy, a little dingy, but filled with character and uniqueness. As an added bonus, the waitress was rude.
Huzzah, New York!
I didn’t think I was going to like New York all that much but I have to admit that it started to grow on me. I came to respect and admire it and, yes, even love it in some ways. I can’t wait to go back again.
I’ve been using these on my Mac for awhile now and figured that someone else out there might like them too! I found these on deviantArt one day while doing Quake searches. Heavily stylized with some brush outlining stuff. I like ‘em!
DM2 – Claustrophobopolis
DM3 – The Abandoned Base
DM4 – The Bad Place
DM6 – The Dark Zone
Remember Quake? I mean the original. The one that ran in 640×480 if you had a kick ass machine? The one that had real time lighting on the rockets and we thought that was jaw droppingly bad ass? Yeah, that one.
I got to thinking about it the other day and thought I’d see if anyone had ported it to the Mac since id Software released the source code all those years ago. Sure enough, someone had! OK, so I had the executables. I needed data. I installed it on my PC (I still have my original CD, natch) and copied the data from there to my Mac. Bingo! Quake running on my Mac.
Now my curiosity was truly tingling. Are there any level editing tools on the Mac? I started looking around and while they were tough to find, I did manage to score a ported set of compiling tools here. These aren’t perfect in that they munge path names pretty badly and you have to put WAD files and things in directories that you don’t really want to but, hey, at least they work.
Then I went hunting for a MAP file to compile. Much to my surprise, John Romero released them all! Yes, every MAP file from the original Quake.
With that in hand, I still needed a decent WAD file to compile the MAPs against. I found what I believe to be the last one in existence here (scroll down to the “quake.wad” download).
And it all works! There are a few missing textures here and there and the tools aren’t the current versions so, yes, there are a few maps that compile into states that Quake won’t load but fuck it – it works!
I’ve been playing the game over the weekend and really enjoying being back in that place. Quake was where I really got started doing level design and it’s where the seeds of my professional career were planted. I’m going to stay in this world for a bit. I like it here.
I took a browse through my server stats for the last few months and in the 2 1/2 months that ‘Shooter in the Abstract‘ has been available it’s been downloaded 7,906 times. That’s pretty darn good for a free shooter game that was made entirely for fun! Love it.
Work is going to be hectic for the next couple of weeks so work on the urban project will slow somewhat. You’ve been warned! Prepare yourselves accordingly! Hup!
Firstly, Castle Crashers looks super delicious awesome! Old school gaming at it’s best. Can’t wait for this to come out!
Secondly, I’ve decided that ‘Shooter in the Abstract‘ needs an update. I’ve been away from it long enough now that I am no longer sick of looking at it! I have some lofty ideas and I’ll keep the blog updated as things progress. The plans aren’t anything TOO radical but they should improve the game in many ways.
I’ve been doing other misc things with my time lately such as practicing drumming on my DD55. I’m obviously still sucking but it’s a lot of fun. My goal is to allocate a room in the next house we move into for a drum set. My deal with my wife is that when that time comes (maybe 5-6 years from now), if I am still interested in drumming, I can get a real set. Whoop-tish!
Sweet, Apple accepted “Shooter In The Abstract“.
Love it!
Some of my Cheetah art work got used in an e-zine this month! Check it out at:
It’s in issue #9 on the page talking about Cheetah. Here’s a direct link.
Woot woot!
The secret project is coming along well but it’s not quite ready to show. On the plus side, my wife finds it “satisfying and fun”. She’s kinky like that. Hope to have something to show soonish but the schedule just seems to drag on and on. What I’ll probably do is post a version with the basic graphics I’m doing and then plug in better graphics later.
I’ve also been hitting my drums lately but nothing worth hearing has come out yet (picture a monkey slamming sticks against a tree and you’ll be close). I’m hoping that once I get my MIDI cable that I’ll be able to record some samples and splice them together in Garage Band to make something resembling a song. That would be great!